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First name: Leon
Last name: Boellmann
Dates: 1862-1897
Category: Quartet
Nationality: French
Opus name: Opus 10 in f (ca 1890)
Publisher: Silvertrust
Peculiarities: www.imslp.org; cobbett; http://www.editionsilvertrust.com/boellmann-piano-quartet.htm; RCG-copie
Information: Leon Boellmann (September 25, 1862 – October 11, 1897) was a French composer of Alsatian origin, best known for a small number of compositions for organ. The son of a pharmacist, Boellmann was born in Ensisheim, Haut-Rhin. In 1871, at the age of nine, he entered the Ecole de Musique Classique et Religieuse (L'Ecole Niedermeyer) in Paris, where he studied with its director, Gustave Lefevre, and with Eugene Gigout. Boellmann there won first prizes in piano, organ, counterpoint, fugue, plainsong, and composition. After his graduation in 1881, Boellmann was hired as sub-organist at the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, and six years later he became cantor and "organiste titulaire," a position he held until his early death, probably from tuberculosis. In 1885, Boellmann married Louise, the daughter of Gustave Lefevre and the niece of Eugene Gigout, into whose house the couple moved. (Having no children of his own, Gigout adopted Boellmann.) Boellmann then taught in Gigout's school of organ playing and improvisation. After Boellmann's death, and the death of his wife the following year, Gigout reared their three orphans, one of whom, Marie-Louise Boellmann-Gigout (1891-1977), became a noted organ teacher in her own right. As a favored student of Gigout, Boellmann moved in the best circles of the French musical world, and as a pleasing personality, he made friends of many artists and was able to give concerts both in Paris and the provinces. Boellmann became known as "a dedicated teacher, trenchant critic, gifted composer and successful performer...who coaxed pleasing sounds out of recalcitrant instruments." Boellmann also wrote musical criticism for L'art musical under the pseudonym "le Reverend Pere Leon" and "un Garcon de la salle Pleyel." During the sixteen years of his professional life, Boellmann composed about 160 pieces in all genres. Faithful to the style of Franck and an admirer of Saint-Saans, Boellmann yet exhibits a turn-of-the-century Post-romantic esthetic, which especially in his organ works, demonstrates "remarkable sonorities." His best-known composition is Suite Gothique (1895), now a staple of the organ repertoire, especially its concluding Toccata, a piece "of moderate difficulty but brilliant effect," which has a dramatic minor theme and a rhythmic emphasis that made it popular even in Boellmann's own day. Boellmann also wrote motets and art songs, works for piano, a symphony, works for cello and orchestra and for organ and orchestra, a cello sonata, and other chamber works.